posted 05-22-2014 09:48 AM                  

RON FOURNIER: The communications team at this White House, again and again and again, they take a bad policy bump, they take a controversy, they take a scandal and instead of addressing it honestly and openly and showing some accountability, they try to be too cute by half, they try to win a cycle and they lose the public's trust.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: This guy said that he was -- I mean, they announced he was going to be out last year. Denis McDonough, who we like, and a lot of people said double down.

FOURNIER: They said he was fired. He wasn't fired. Jay Carney, the other day, with a straight face says that the American Legion supported this move, that this was enough. Well, that's the exact opposite of what the American Legion said and said it right on their website. I think Jay forgot that, you know, we have this thing called the internet. So it's just really clumsy.

If you go back on the policy of this, obviously, the VA has been a troubled agency for a long time. Obviously, the winding down of the two wars that the president has done in keeping his word with what the majority of the public wants has overwhelmed the system. But also, obviously, he's been in office six years, this agency needs radical reform and he has done nothing about it. And then when he gets called on it then, when we have obvious corruption and obviously ill-serving of these veterans, instead of holding somebody accountable, instead of taking quick action to radically reform it, they do a song and dance and play the old 1990s spin game. It's like the -- I call it the 20th century media strategy dealing with a 21st century crisis.